FIVE STOP THE COMPLAINTS PARENTING TIPS

This is a recast of an Emotional Fitness Training blog post and offers parenting advice about complaints, yours and your kids. First, a cartoon:

The Emotional Fitness blog post was suggested by WordPress’ Daily Prompt asking bloggers to include the sentence “He tried to hit me with a forklift” in the last paragraph of a story.

My whole story was this paragraph: “I can’t complain, he missed me when he tried to floor me with a rock; then he tried to hit me with a forklift and missed. Last laugh was and is mine; he hurt his back trying to hurt me and can’t get out of bed; I am jumping for joy as justice prevailed.”

PARENTING THOUGHTS ABOUT KIDS COMPLAINING

When something hurts complaining once or twice to those that can hear eases the pain; there after, complaining only embeds the hurt in your brain and keeps it hurting you. The Emotional Fitness Blog Post discusses how to deal when you want to keep complaining.

The problem for parents? Some kids are very stubborn. Reframe stubborn: persistent, strong willed, and determined. A persistent complainer of any age wears you down. When it is your child wearing you down, you do what you know is wrong: you give in. Welcome to the Reality World called Good Enough Parenting.

PARENTING TIPS ABOUT COMPLAINING

Parenting Tip One: All the usual good advice about complaining and whining works. You know what I mean: ignoring, distracting timing out the little ones and implementing monetary or other punishments for the bigger guys and gals who beat you to emotional death with complaints. (Non-abusive punishments are important parenting tools – actions speak louder than words.”

The main requirement is that you be more stubborn than you child.

Parenting Tip Two: If you do find yourself giving in, note that you are doing so preferably with a bit of humor. Putting your hands in the air and aSaying something like, “I surrender, but now you owe me” minimizes the damage.

Parenting Tip Three: Think about the signals you send that let a kid know when complaining might work. We all knew as kids when our parents meant business and when we had wiggle room to get our own way. My mother yelled a great deal; when she started to whisper it was time to shape up or find a hiding place.

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We live in dangerous times; times made more dangerous by how people handle opinions that disagree with theirs. Emotional Fitness Training Thoughts First a story: A woman called her psychiatrist in the middle of the night, after an argument with her husband. He had berated her, saying she was an awful mother and a worse wife. ...Continue reading ‘Thinking Ab […]

Thank you for all you do Practice Kindness and share, comment or like this post. If you haven’t subscribed to my blog, please do. You will help keep me strong. Katherine Links Of Interest An introduction to Emotional Fitness Training. Emotional Intelligence (en.wikipedia.org) The five components of Emotional Intelligence (www.sonoma.edu) An Emotional Fitne […]